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May 21, 2015

Engineering Interview

Anonymous Employee in Palo Alto, CA

No Offer

Neutral Experience

Difficult Interview

Application

I applied through college or university. The process took 2+ weeks – interviewed at Palantir Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) in April 2015.

Interview

Found representative at a info session at my university. Gave them my resume. They emailed me to take a quick coding challenge on Hanckerrank. It was really easy. Then they scheduled a phone interview. Used codepair. Pretty intense.

Other Interview Reviews for Palantir Technologies

Engineer Interview

I applied online. The process took 3 weeks – interviewed at Palantir Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) in November 2013.

Interview

HR was quite terrible, a company should never have HR to ask technical questions because they don't have a clue. 1. HR letter asking to schedule an interview, replied, didn't hear a thing for about 2 weeks 2. Wrote a follow up letter to HR, HR responded and said it has been scheduled at this date and time, w/o asking my scheudle 3. Telephone interview 4. 3 days later, a thanks but no thanks Interview Questions: Basic behavioral 1. Playing a game of too high and too low to guess a number between 1 and 1000. What is the maximum time it takes to get a right answer? 2. How many bits does it take to store 100,000 3. Describe the basic functions of a hashmap

Engineering Interview

Anonymous Employee in Palo Alto, CA

No Offer

Positive Experience

Average Interview

Application

The process took 1+ week – interviewed at Palantir Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) in August 2009.

Interview

I applied for a business development position. They handed me off to an engineering position. I would have preferred they just turned me away, but I have to respect the attention and effort on their part. They were after a very specific QA related skill set which was entirely foreign to me. I fell in love with the company, but knew that position was not right for me. I had a second phone interview which (2 required for out of state hires). As disappointing as the whole process was in the end, I definitely feel good about the company. I just hope they give me another chance if a suitable position opens up.

Engineer Interview

Anonymous Employee

No Offer

Positive Experience

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4+ weeks – interviewed at Palantir Technologies.

Interview

Found by a recruiter who asked some basic questions. Forwarded my information onto the group and then had two separate phone interviews which turned into a 3 day onsite visit to California. Had several interviews that lasted from morning to evening. Awesome company, everyone was super nice and honest. A little hard since by the end of day I was getting tired and my answers were getting vague (time zone differences). Wish I was more prepared, I would have loved to work there!!!

Engineering Interview

Anonymous Employee

No Offer

Negative Experience

Average Interview

Application

I applied online. The process took a week – interviewed at Palantir Technologies in June 2012.

Interview

I applied via LinkedIn and a recruiter contacted me to schedule a phone screen. The process was prompt and cordial. During the phone screen I was contacted by a young engineer, who told me a bit about Palantir (nothing I did not know already). The problem was that he was calling from a cell phone from his home. Palantir has flex timing, and he worked from after lunch till will after mid-night (12 hours). Then I was asked to solve a puzzle and then write the code. The puzzle could be mapped into a graph traversal based search algorithm with some small twists. I got the mapping right away and then was asked to code it up, using Google Docs. I wrote some notes down to describe my solution and also suggested some way to speed up the process by building the graph lazily. I am C++ guy so it simply takes longer to write everything out compared to productivity oriented languages. The interviewer was silent during the process, except telling me I am running out of time or asking me where I had declared a particular variable. At that point I simple wrote down the few remaining steps in English. Later that afternoon I emailed the recruiter with the final solution (added 20-30 lines); the total code was about 170 lines. A few days later I got an email saying they do not have a match for me. Given the nature of the interview, I think it would have been better if they use interviewstreet or some other online coding site. That way they can describe the problem properly and not worry about bad cell phone reception, or the interviewer's inability to communicate well since he just woke up or is not too interested. It also will prepare the candidate for what to expect. And since speed-coding is what they are looking for (the interviewer mentioned that Palantir hires people who can program at 10x the average programmer), an IDE is much better environment to write code than a Google Doc with no indentation, coloring or auto-correct.

Interview Questions

The problem was relatively straight forward; you have to be prepared for what the phone screen was all going to be about (speed-coding) Answer Question

Engineering Interview

Anonymous Employee

No Offer

Neutral Experience

Difficult Interview

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks – interviewed at Palantir Technologies in May 2012.

Interview

I got this call from a recruiter about the position. An interview date was scheduled, the interviewer was very formal and asked lots of questions about the role. Most of the questions were technical but I'm sure cleared all the questions. A brain teaser game was also played which was fun. Three days later, the recruiter called me that I wasn't selected because I lack communication skills which I felt bad about.

Engineering Interview

Anonymous Employee

No Offer

Negative Experience

Average Interview

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1+ week – interviewed at Palantir Technologies in May 2012.

Interview

After my friend reffered me to Palantir, got a mail from HR to schedule the interview. However on the scheduled day the interviewer missed the call. After a mail interview was rescheduled but again interviewer missed the interview call and it happened 4 times over a period of 10 days. Finally HR left over it to interviewer to schedule the call when we agreed to talk on a Sunday. However this time interviewer called a bit earlier and was not at all intrested in going forward for the call. He just asked two questions and even on answering them utmostly ended the call abruptly. My review for the organization by the way they interviewed. Glad to receive a rejection mail from them. Anyways i won't have joined such a mis-managed organization.

Engineering Interview

I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day – interviewed at Palantir Technologies in April 2012.

Interview

First stage involved two phone interviews, questions were tough but they helped me work through them. I guess I did well on phone interviews, so I was invited for in person interviews--there were about 5 (maybe 6 or 7, cant remember) one on one interviews. I thought questions were perhaps easier than the phone interviews but I did study many algorithms prior to the interview so maybe thats why.

Glassdoor has 15 interview reports and interview questions from people who interviewed for Engineering jobs at Palantir Technologies. Interview reviews are posted anonymously by Palantir Technologies interview candidates and employees.